Welcome to edition fifty seven of Insider Weekends. Insider buying increased with insiders purchasing $47.55 million of their stock last week when compared to $10.64 million in the week prior. Selling on the other hand decreased with insiders selling $660.99 million worth of stock compared to $758.59 million in the week prior.

Sell/Buy Ratio:

The insider Sell/Buy ratio is calculated by dividing the total insider sales in a given week by total insider purchases that week. The adjusted ratio for last week dropped to 13.9. In other words, insiders sold nearly 14 times as much stock as they purchased. The Sell/Buy ratio this week compares favorably with the week prior when the ratio stood at 71.29. We are calculating an adjusted ratio by removing transactions by funds and companies and trying as best as possible only to retain information about insiders and 10% owners who are not funds or companies.

Insider Sell Buy Ratio July 8, 2011:

Note: As mentioned in the first post in this series Introduction to Insider Weekends, certain industries have their preferred metrics such as same store sales for retailers, funds from operations (FFO) for REITs and revenue per available room (RevPAR) for hotels that provide a better basis for comparison than simple valuation metrics. However metrics like Price/Earnings, Price/Sales and Enterprise Value/EBITDA included below should provide a good starting point for analyzing the majority of stocks.

Energy Transfer Equity (ETE) is the General Partner of another publicly listed company Energy Transfer Partners (NYSE:ETP), which distributes propane and owns natural gas pipelines. Mr. Warren is the Chairman of both these companies and also serves in the role of CEO of ETP.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Energy Transfer Equity, L.P. here.

Chairman of the Board Harold C. Simmons acquired 51,100 shares of this chemical and component products company, paying $52.37 per share for a total amount of $2,676,107.

These shares were acquired indirectly through TIMET Finance Management Company, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of Titanium Metals Corporation (TIE). Mr. Simmons is also the Chairman of Titanium Metals.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Valhi, Inc. here.

Chief Operating Officer Paul G. Lorenzini acquired 49,047 shares of this specialty chemicals and biofuels company, paying $12.21 per share for a total amount of $598,673. Mr. Lorenzini increased his stake by 8.23% to 645,047 shares with this purchase.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for FutureFuel Corp. here.

CEO and Chairman Jia Zhi Hong acquired 200,000 shares of this gold jewelry manufacturer, paying $1.56 per share for a total amount of $312,900. Mr. Hong increased his stake by 1.15% to 17,560,194 shares with this purchase.

Kingold has taken quite the beating this year along with other Chinese reverse merger companies, falling from a high of $10.60 last September to current levels. Interactive Brokers has a list of Chinese reverse merger companies that are subject to 100% margin requirements and you can find the list here.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Kingold Jewelry, Inc. here.

This Portland, OR based company has been transitioning its business model from tracking the sales of DVDs to tracking viewership of Video On Demand products and Box Office data. While its new division is growing rapidly (30% year-over-year growth in Q4), the old “home entertainment” tracking business still represented 65% of overall revenue of $97.1 million in fiscal Q4 ended March 2011.

The company posted disappointing earnings over the last two quarters and the numbers look terrible for this company. On the positive side, the company managed to generate positive free cash flow last fiscal year despite a net loss and has $26.3 million in net cash and investments on its balance sheet to help it navigate its way around this transition phase. The company also announced a $5 million share buyback when it announced full year fiscal 2011 results earlier this month.

Additional purchases by these directors is encouraging.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Rentrak Corporation here.

P/E: N/A

Forward P/E: 24.18

Industry P/E: 16.88

P/S: 2.23

Price/Book: 3.85

EV/EBITDA: 444.08

Market Cap: $209.33M

Avg. Daily Volume: 58,719

52 Week Range: $19.53 – $31.04

Click to enlarge

You can view the full list of purchases from this Insider Buying page.

Chairman of the Board Maurice Marciano sold 600,000 shares of this apparel and accessories retailer for $42.79, generating $25.67 million from the sale. These shares were sold indirectly through trusts.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for Guess? Inc. here.

Exec Chairman of the Board John G. Sperling sold 375,000 shares for $47.35, generating $17.8 million from the sale. These shares were sold indirectly by a trust and 47,296 of these shares were restricted stock units (“RSUs”).

Vice Chairman of the Board Peter V. Sperling sold 135,000 shares for $47.21, generating $6.4 million from the sale. 25,000 of these shares were sold indirectly by a trust and 5,624 of these shares were restricted stock units (“RSUs”).

EVP, Academic Strategies Terri C. Bishop sold 5,000 shares for $48.30, generating $241,500 from the sale. 1,736 of these shares were sold as a result of exercising options immediately prior to the sale.

Director Matthys J. Wessels sold 1 million shares of this supply chain services and solutions company company for $19.10, generating $19.1 million from the sale. These shares were sold indirectly by a private holding company that is indirectly controlled by Mr. Wessels.

You can view the list of recent insider transactions for UTi Worldwide Inc. here.